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55Substance dualism : A non-cartesian approachIn Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The waning of materialism, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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67Does the descriptivist/anti-descriptivist debate have any philosophical significance?Philosophical Books 48 (1): 27-33. 2007.
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324Material coincidence and the cinematographic fallacy: A response to OlsonPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (208): 369-372. 2002.Eric T. Olson has argued that those who hold that two material objects can exactly coincide at a moment of time, with one of these objects constituting the other, face an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the alleged differences between the objects, such as their being of different kinds and possessing different persistence-conditions. The differences, he suggests, are inexplicable, given that the objects in question are composed of the same particles related in precisely the same way. In…Read more
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282The definition of enduranceAnalysis 69 (2): 277-280. 2009.David Lewis, following in the tradition of Broad, Quine and Goodman, says that change in an object X consists in X's being temporally extended and having qualitatively different temporal parts. Analogously, change in a spatially extended object such as a road consists in its having different spatial parts . The alternative to this view is that ordinary objects undergo temporal change in virtue of having different intrinsic non-relational properties at different times. They endure, remaining the …Read more
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7On the individuation of powersIn Anna Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations, Routledge. 2010.
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204Self, agency, and mental causationJournal of Consciousness Studies 6 (8-9): 225-239. 1999.A self or person does not appear to be identifiable with his or her organic body, nor with any part of it, such as the brain; and yet selves seem to be agents, capable of bringing about physical events as causal consequences of certain of their conscious mental states. How is this possible in a universe in which, it appears, every physical event has a sufficient cause which is wholly physical? The answer is that this is possible if a certain kind of naturalistic dualism is true, according to whi…Read more
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32Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical LogicCambridge University Press. 2013.Forms of thought are involved whenever we name, describe, or identify things, and whenever we distinguish between what is, might be, or must be the case. It appears to be a distinctive feature of human thought that we can have modal thoughts, about what might be possible or necessary, and conditional thoughts, about what would or might be the case if something else were the case. Even the simplest thoughts are structured like sentences, containing referential and predicative elements, and studyi…Read more
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218Event causation and agent causationGrazer Philosophische Studien 61 (1): 1-20. 2001.It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but not to be restric…Read more
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77Review of D.m. Armstrong, Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (1). 2011.
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T. C. POTTS "Structures and Categories for the Representation of Meaning" (review)History and Philosophy of Logic 16 (1): 140. 1995.
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247A neo-Aristotelian substance ontology: neither relational nor constituentIn Tuomas E. Tahko (ed.), Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 229-248. 2011.Following the lead of Gustav Bergmann ( 1967 ), if not his precise terminology, ontologies are sometimes divided into those that are ‘relational’ and those that are ‘constituent’ (Wolterstorff 1970 ). Substance ontologies in the Aristotelian tradition are commonly thought of as being constituent ontologies, because they typically espouse the hylemorphic dualism of Aristotle ’s Metaphysics – a doctrine according to which an individual substance is always a combination of matter and form. But an a…Read more
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3Can the self disintegrate? Personal identity, psychopathology and disunities of consciousnessIn Julian C. Hughes, Stephen J. Louw & Steven R. Sabat (eds.), Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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1. some varieties of psycho-physical dualismIn Alessandro Antonietti, Antonella Corradini & Jonathan E. Lowe (eds.), Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Lexington Books. pp. 167. 2008.
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88In defence of the simplicity argumentAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (1). 2000.This Article does not have an abstract
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18Against disjunctivismIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 95--111. 2008.
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308New directions in metaphysics and ontologyAxiomathes 18 (3): 273-288. 2008.A personal view is presented of how metaphysics and ontology stand at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the light of developments during the twentieth. It is argued that realist metaphysics, with serious ontology at its heart, has a promising future, provided that its adherents devote some time and effort to countering the influences of both its critics and its false friends.
Areas of Specialization
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Physical Science |